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New cooking book presents healthy Okinawan recipes

Date Posted: 2001-09-15

A new recipe book introducing the most typical ingredients and dishes of Okinawa has hit local bookstores. The book is compiled by a group of cooking professionals who are experts on Okinawan traditional food.

The book, titled “Home dishes of long-living Okinawans” recommends that people should eat meals consisting of three separate dishes in order to maintain a healthy diet. This wisdom has been handed down through generations, and the book fully utilizes the concept. I contains 150 recipes complete with calorie count and makes a great use of ingredients commonly available in Okinawa.

The book introduces three recipes on each open page, which are placed in order of the main dish, side dish and staple food or soup. It is convenient for the user to decide a combination of dishes, and calculate the adequate calories. All meals average 600 kilocalories each.

The group spent two years and four months to compile the book. Tomoko Tomori representing the group says, “It is getting normal for an Okinawan family to conclude a meal with one soup and one dish, but it leads to over-eating and unbalanced nutrition. Okinawa’s dishes have a great tradition of using tofu or vegetables as the main dish. We hope that this book would help people, especially the young generation learn.”

This is the introduction of a series of recipes under the title “Tomoko’s Kitchen” by Japan Update. We will introduce one dish from the book each week in our paper. It would be a good idea to learn Tomoko’s idea reducing fat and make the best use of the real taste of the ingredients.